Opportunities and shortcuts do not mix!

Great opportunities come not from shortcuts but from the main roads.
As somebody said roads lead to everywhere while shortcut just leads to
one place.

When you are taking a shortcut, you are restricting yourself, you are
putting yourself at a disadvantage.

From studying for AeSI, to learning new software, shortcuts might
help you learn fast but in the long run they decrease your abilities.
They might help you gain a certain short term advantage but are lame
over the long haul.

So seek the long roads. Shun the shortcuts. Study the whole chapers
than just reading someone's readymade notes. Read the main theory than
just going over the back question answers. Use proper menu comands
than relying on toolbars. Extend your tutorials and explore beyond
what it says, than just aiming to complete them.

So aim to travel the main roads, short cuts always by passes
opportunities.

Read more about how shortcuts slow you down by clicking http://my-aesi.blogspot.com/search?q=shortcuts

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3 things that Dr. Ramamuthy taught me and how they can help you learn catia or solidworks better

I did my training in NAL. I began it in my last semester. It was around the time when VMD subject took a turn around. This was the semester that AeSI folks all around saw no person passing in VMD!! So that time i joined NAL and was fortunate to be able work under Dr. S Ramamurthy, then sceintest F.

Apart from applying my aerospace knowledge there, i learnt NASTRAN, ANSYS, solidworks and many other programming languages..

Of those days i remember this 3 points that I have learnt from my mentor. This are the 3 steps that have made my learning of so many software's easy and fruitful

1. Always begin with basics. You will never get stuck. don't jump steps. Approach the problem from the root. follow all assumptions and tackle one problem one at a time. From CATIA to NASTRAN, everywhere Dr. Ramamurthy began any analysis project from the basics. he kept the focus of the basics and developed the whole thing from that point. He incrementally added the details and curved out the perfect mesh or model.

2. Work is your puja. This is the nirvana, this is the karma. If you can enjoy it and bring your passion into it you are the number one. He used to say this and this is what Dr. Ramamuthy followed. This is what he preached and followed. One glance at his desk will reveal him hunched back and playing around with his books, thesis or softwares. I still remember he was the first scientist who came to our division and the last who he left. He was very much involved in all his projects. How con he bring so much . Well his work. his passion in the subject supplied all the energy. Like Natrajan sir., his passion was his fuel.

3. Avoid shortcuts, they might be easy on the surface but they need more more work in the long run. Shortcuts can stumble you in unfamiliar territories but not the long cuts...shorts cuts are like AeSI, easy to get in But difficult to pass. He followed this in learning software too. He used file menu than relying on the shortcuts of the tool bar. For many it seemed to be a waste of time but I have seen that because he was accustomed to using the menu, he was more efficient in any machine he sat, while the lead designer in our team was great in his own customized system but his productivity decreased drastically if he sat on a different system, struggling to find the shortcut toolbars. So while learning any software, rely more on the menus and standard keyboard shortcuts than on toolbars, they might look inviting but with menus you will be more productive in the long term.

So folks what do you say? What have you learnt. Share your knowledge? Training is all about learning. So what have you learnt from your experiences.

Keyboard Shortcuts to explore Microsoft Office

Got this in a forwarded mail today. posting it for your reference. We know shortcuts, and here some more to explore Windows Office in different ways.

Important Word Shortcuts

• All Caps - CTRL+SHIFT+A
• Annotation - ALT+CTRL+M
• Auto Format - ALT+CTRL+K
• Auto Text - F3 or ALT+CTRL+V
• Bold - CTRL+B or CTRL+SHIFT+B
• Bookmark - CTRL+SHIFT+F5
• Copy - CTRL+C or CTRL+INSERT
• Copy Format - CTRL+SHIFT+C
• Copy Text - SHIFT+F2
• Create Auto Text - ALT+F3
• Date Field - ALT+SHIFT+D
• Delete Back Word - CTRL+BACKSPACE
• Delete Word - CTRL+DELETE
• Dictionary - ALT+SHIFT+F7
• Do Field Click - ALT+SHIFT+F9
• Doc Maximize - CTRL+F10
• Doc Move - CTRL+F7
• Doc Restore - CTRL+F5
• Doc Size - CTRL+F8
• Grow Font - CTRL+SHIFT+.
• Grow Font One Point - CTRL+]Hanging Indent - CTRL+T
• Header Footer Link - ALT+SHIFT+R
• Help - F1
• Hidden - CTRL+SHIFT+H
• Hyperlink - CTRL+K
• Indent - CTRL+M
• Italic - CTRL+I or CTRL+SHIFT+I
• Justify Para - CTRL+J
• Left Para - CTRL+L
• Line Up Extend - SHIFT+UP
• List Num Field - ALT+CTRL+L
• Outline - ALT+CTRL+O
• Outline Collapse - ALT+SHIFT+- or ALT+SHIFT+NUM -
• Outline Demote - ALT+SHIFT+RIGHT
• Outline Expand - ALT+SHIFT+=
• Outline Expand - ALT+SHIFT+NUM +
• Outline Move Down - ALT+SHIFT+DOWN
• Outline Move Up - ALT+SHIFT+UP
• Outline Promote - ALT+SHIFT+LEFT
• Outline Show First Line - ALT+SHIFT+L
• Lock Fields - CTRL+3 or CTRL+F11
• Web Go Back - ALT+LEFT
• Web Go Forward - ALT+RIGHT
• Word Left - CTRL+LEFT
• Word Left Extend - CTRL+SHIFT+LEFT
• Word Right - CTRL+RIGHT

Excel Time saving Shortcuts:

• Move to next cell in row - Tab
• Move to previous cell in row - Shift + Tab
• Up one screen - Page Up
• Down one screen - Page Down
• Move to next worksheet - Ctrl + Page Down
• Move to previous worksheet - Ctrl + Page Up
• Go to first cell in data region - Ctrl + Home
• Go to last cell in data region - Ctrl + End
• Bold toggle for selection - Ctrl + B
• Italic toggle for selection - Ctrl + I
• Underline toggle for selection - Ctrl + U
• Strikethrough for selection - Ctrl + 5
• Change the font - Ctrl + Shift + F
• Change the font size - Ctrl + Shift + P
• Apply outline borders - Ctrl + Shift + 7
• Remove all borders - Ctrl + Shift + Underline
• Wrap text in same cell - Alt + Enter
• Format cells - Ctrl + 1
• Select font - Ctrl + Shift + F
• Select point size - Ctrl + Shift + P
• Format as currency - Ctrl + Shift + 4
• Format as general - Ctrl + Shift + # (hash sign)
• Format as percentage - Ctrl + Shift + 5
• Format as number - Ctrl + Shift + 1
• Autosum a range of cells - Alt + Equals Sign
• Insert the date - Ctrl +; (semi-colon)
• Insert the time - Ctrl + Shift +; (semi-colon)
• Insert columns/rows - Ctrl + Shift + + (plus sign)
• Insert a new worksheet - Shift + F11
• Read Monitor Cell One - Alt + Shift + 1
• Read Monitor Cell Two - Alt + Shift + 2
• Read Monitor Cell Three - Alt + Shift + 3
• Read Monitor Cell Four - Alt + Shift + 4
• List Visible Cells With Data - Ctrl + Shift + D
• Lists Data In Current Column - Ctrl + Shift + C
• List Data In Current Row - Ctrl + Shift + R
• Select Hyperlink - Ctrl + Shift + H
• Move To Worksheet Listbox - Ctrl + Shift + S
• Move To Monitor Cell - Ctrl + Shift + M
• Select Worksheet Objects - Ctrl + Shift + O
• List Cells At Page Breaks - Ctrl + Shift + B
• Options Listbox - Insert + V

Easy move through Powerpoint:

• Apply subscript formatting - CTRL+EQUAL SIGN (=)
• Apply superscript formatting - CTRL+PLUS SIGN (+)
• Bold - CTRL+B
• Capitalize - SHIFT+F3
• Copy - CTRL+C
• Delete a word - CTRL+BACKSPACE
• Demote a paragraph - ALT+SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW
• Find - CTRL+F
• Insert a hyperlink - CTRL+K
• Insert a new slide - CTRL+M
• Italicize - CTRL+I
• Make a duplicate of the current slide - CTRL+D
• Open - CTRL+O
• Open the Font dialog box - CTRL+T
• Paste - CTRL+V
• Print - CTRL+P
• Promote a paragraph - ALT+SHIFT+LEFT ARROW
• Repeat your last action - F4 or CTRL+Y
• Save - CTRL+S
• Select all - CTRL+A
• Start a slide show - F5
• Switch to the next pane (clockwise) - F6
• Switch to the previous pane - SHIFT+F6
• Undo - CTRL+Z
• View guides - CTRL+G

The trick here is not to learn each one of them. Real benefit will come in taking a bunch of them and applying them on regular basis and then coming back for some more..

6 shift plus function key shortcuts for productive excel work

Here's 6 Shift plus function key shortcuts in excel that helps me in
my work. They are all quick ways to do the most common stuff in excel.
Knowing them will not let you live longer but certainly will make it
more productive.

Shift F2 Insert quick comment…
Shift F3 Insert quick formula
Shift F5 Quick find and replace
Shift F10 Quick right Click menu
Shift F11 Insert quick f11 key
Shift F12 Quick save

Find more function key shortcuts of excel by clicking this link http://my-aesi.blogspot.com/search?q=excel

Shun shortcuts while learning CAE softwares

When learning a cad software like catia or ug or learning an analysis
software like nastran, hypermesh, icem, fluent etc, shun shortcuts.

This is the simple but most effective way to learn that specific
software.

Shun keyborad shortcuts. Don't use toolbars. Intead of choosing the
plot contour option from the toolbar, hunt them on the file menu.
Instead of zooming with one keyboard command, hunt the relevant
command in the menus!

Why this helps in learning that software better?

Instead of going for the easiest route, you dig into the file menus.
This exposes you to many other command. You absorb other commands even
if you are not using them regularly.

Menu commands are arranged in a specific manner and accessing those
regularly make you understand which commands form a particular group.

Using menu commands make you more robust. They will always be same in
any system you work. Users can arrange toolbars easily but specific
commands in the menu system remain the same, so the habit of using
menu commands will come handy if you switch systems.

Find more info on mastering specific CAE tools by searching the blog
via this link http://my-aesi.blogspot.com/search?q=tools

25 Very Useful Excel Keyboard Shortcuts

Majority of my work in office is done on excel and I have seen most of the other folks who are working on NASTRAN, CATIA, Solidworks, ANSYS etc. etc use excel one time a day, so when I saw this excellent post from chandoo about excel I just had to share this with you.

Here’s the 25 useful excel keyboard shortcuts that has the power to make a super man in excel !!! :) Thanks chandoo.

The tips marked in different colors are the once that I can’t live without

1. To format any selected object, press ctrl+1
2. To insert current date, press ctrl+;
3. To insert current time, press ctrl+shift+;
4. To repeat last action, press F4
5. To edit a cell comment, press shift + F2
6. To autosum selected cells, press alt + =
7. To see the suggest drop-down in a cell, press alt + down arrow
8. To enter multiple lines in a cell, press alt+enter
9. To insert a new sheet, press shift + F11
10. To edit active cell, press F2 (places cursor in the end)
11. To hide current row, press ctrl+9
12. To hide current column, press ctrl+0
13. To unhide rows in selected range, press ctrl+shift+9
14. To unhide columns in selected range, press ctrl+shift+0
15. To recalculate formulas, press F9
16. To select data in current region, press ctrl+shift+8
17. To see formulas in the worksheet, press ctrl+shift+` (ctrl+~)
18. While editing formulas to change the reference type from absolute to relative vice versa, press F4
19. To format a number as currency, press ctrl+shift+4 (ctrl+$)
20. To apply outline border around selected cells, press ctrl+shift+7
21. To open the macros dialog box, press alt+F8
22. To copy value from above cell, press ctrl+’
23. To format current cell with comma formats, press ctrl+shift+1
24. To go to the next worksheet, press ctrl+shift+pg down
25. To go to the previous worksheet, press ctrl+shift+pg up

Go over to chandoo’s blog for more excellent excel tips. Do you have something excellent to share. just hit the comments!!!

4 function key excel shortcuts that help me in my work

Whatever you use, be it catia, solidworks, UG, NASTRAN,ANSYS ,PATRAN, HYPERMESH or any other CAE software, excel is one of the software tool that always be the one that will be come to you. Maybe for preparing some graphs or presenting the data from the analysis. For my work excel is tool that i use everyday ion my office. so today i would like to share some of 4 function key shortcuts of excel that has made my life easy.

F2 the second most used key for me. If you want to edit a cell value. This is the key to use. Instead of double clicking F2 comes handy to edit those long formulae's.

F7  spell checker. My spellings are bad, even in spread sheet I manage to get many spelling mistakes, so one click on F7 I the best that I can get.

F4 is the most versatile function key of excel. I use it the most. It repeats your last action. So this can be used for many task. Since there no fix action. so its programmable to use any action. If I have to delete a row. repeatedly. I select the row and then right click on it and choose delete. after than any row I want to delete I just choose that row and press F4. similarly if I have to clear lot of stuff from one sheet. I use the F4 key instead of right click and choosing clear contents multiple times.

F11. Most of the time my work in excel involves making graphs of the data and f11 comes to the rescue. just select the data and press F11. You will have the default graph plotted. Since I want a particular type of graph so I always make a default graph and use it every time I need a graph.

Do you have any shortcut keys then please do share it with me.

Some Tips to learn from Tutorials

Never use shortcut when learning a software. My experience of learning a new FEM software that is always popping up and figuring in most of my posts now is a testament of the fact.

Within short time I have learnt a great deal on this software, yes even my collogues wonder that I know more about this software than the person who has been touch with the software for last one year.

Yesterday only the guy came to my desk and saw that I was doing something in the FEM software and he wondered, “hey, can we do this in this software? I didn't knew that ?" This came from a person who for the last 6 months was working on that software. I saw he relied on toolbars while I knew where this commands were in the menus, he usually did those stuff through toolbars

So what are things to watch for. Use menu items than the toolbars. yes toolbars are shortcuts but relying  on menus means you will expose yourself to many other commands. This brings the other options to notice.

Same thing goes for dialog box inputs. In the dialog box don't just blindly fill in the default values explore. Try all the fields. Fill in unexpected values. See the error message the software throws up. understand the meaning of defaults.

Once the tutorial is over don't stop your exploration there. Continue it as you go along. Usually tutorials teach about one aspect of the tool but there is no harm to move ahead.

Explore instead of plotting displacement plot von stress or instead of vector plots try counter plots. Change the direction of load or  boundary conditions. For me the tutorials does not end until I am tired of the model.

Yes all this takes time but even if you don't get anything important out of it but you are always learning and your mind  picks up little pieces that are helpful and It also helps your mind to get used to the tool.

Do you do any of this stuff in your learning of a new tool?

For everyone who is using excel, here's a little advice

For everyone who is using excel, here's a little advice from

I’m sorry to break this to you, but if you spend your time analyzing data and Excel is your primary tool, then you must use VBA. I’m not telling you should be a programmer, far from it. But you should be able to record a macro and make some simple tweaks. There are many repetitive tasks that can easily done using three lines of code.

Unfortunately lost the source of the quote but very true.

Here's the learning stairs route that I can suggest for anyone wanting to master excel.

1. Learn the 50 common basic formulae.
2. Learn the useful shortcuts of excel
3. Then go for recording small macros!
4. Then start tweaking it.
5. Next read more about VBA and apply it in editing your macro.
6. After this to excel help file and pour over it's documentation.

This are the steps. There is no direct lift to VBA programming. Learn this via this steps you will climb much faster.

Good luck!

If you aren’t facing Challenges you are not Learning

Its true if you aren’t facing a problem you aren’t learning.

You are busy learning the new catia software, you are going smoothly in all your tutorials. But as you progress through your tutorials do you feel “am I learning something new, am I growing. Am I facing a problem that I wanted to solve.”

If you are not hindered by a problem you aren't growing. Solving a problem, is the best way to grow and learn.

I have always said that real learning only comes when you are working on a real time projects and are facing the day to day real challenges.

My CAD learning accelerated when I was assigned on a real life project of CAD modeling of mixed flow compressor. Previously I was learning the solidworks software with tutorials in my spare time, but the real lessons I learnt came when I faces some real problem working on modeling that compressor.

The constraints of the projects presents you to try out new things. So always challenge yourself. Always strike to work on a problem. This is the only way you will truly learn a tool or a subject.

If your boss or mentor in your training period is not giving you any challenging and interesting work. Give yourself interesting assignments, put restrictions and work on something that do have real value for you you or others.

Do the tutorials but make them hard. Put your own constraint. The barriers you put might be of time based or resource based. This will help you grow.

Time constraint is the easy one. You can say you will complete a certain job in 10 minutes. The resource based constraint can be that in your next modeling project you will not use the toolbars shortcuts at all. Or you can say that you will do the next modeling of the FEA model by scripting. You can put a restriction that in your next tutorial you will not touch the mouse.

So by limiting the time or putting restriction on the tools that you can use you can challenge yourself to solve the problems. This will only help you grow.

Try it. It really works.

Related:

• Questions On AeSI training
• AeSI Training: 11 questions to ask yourself before deciding on training
• Useful Tip that accelerated my CAE tool learning

Measure and store – one tip to have productive office life

Anything that is not measured is going down the drain.

Well tell me how are you capturing the things that you are learning on a daily basis.

Working in office environment is a learning experience and each and every day you are learning something new. Sometimes the thing we learn is huge and some time its just little small bricks that add up to a wall.

In my own office life, I have seen I pick up small shortcuts, little un-mentionable details that make my work life so easy and productive. This small details are the cements that hold the big piece of our work and projects shine. So are you recording them?

Do you think your mind is keeping all the small things that you are learning?  what is your way of registering the things that you learn. how are you making sure that all this tiny nuggets of wisdom that help you complete one project after another are not slipping down.

Our mind is fickle, it registers and the big stuff and it will only remember the things that come to us repeatedly but will tend to slip on the small stuff that helped us complete the assignment, so don't entirely rely on your mind to remember all the small details of your work. Make sure you have a system or place to capture the stuff.

For me its a little text file where I record the little nuggets of inputs. its simple, its on my desktop and every time I learn something small or significant and something i want to remember, I pop up the file and add it there.

This simple but effective technique has saved me hours of work, increased my productivity and enabled me to impress my colleagues...  Yes since I record all the small things I learn, its always comes handy when any colleague of mine has any problem in his assignment, I always find something that can help him..

Since its a text file has the advantage of moving around and I can use it in any location that I work.

So how are you capturing your learning. Don't let them slip by... get them in somewhere before they fade away because of non use...

Sun Solaris - Some More Productive Tips

In my last post about sunsolaris i talked about the use of semicolon in
automating and combining many tasks in sun solaris. today i will explore
another feature that combined with semicolon can make your working in sun
solaris a lot easier.

Before i go into that, i will tell you about a .cshrc file thats always there in
your home directory. Its the file that we will be using. I don't have much
knowledge about this file but this works like the autoexec.bat file of windows
and can always load during logon and can be used to do some of the cool features that you can customize.


We will be using the command alias in this file to automate some of the
commands that you use on a daily basis. The things you can do is limitless.

Here i will represent some of the common things that i have used it for.

I always develop in a folder and every time i don't want to use
cd /h/username/folder1/folder2/folder3

writing this is tedious so i have written an alias which does this for me.

alias cd1  'cd /h/username/folder1/folder2/folder3'


This line i have pasted in the .cshrc file. To use it you need to logout and
login again.

Same way i use a trial version of the software and i have to type series of
commands to compile and execute the program. this has been done by using.

alias tt64 'make clean; make sun64;strcalc -p -input sss.dat'

Now here tt64 is the command that i have to type at teh command promt and it
does the following make clean, then compiling the program for 64 bit and the
starts the strcalc program with all the options.

Easy isn't it?

As you all know i having using windows all my life till now, so teh habit of
doing cls, dir, calling calc and notepad remains. so for those i have written the
following alias

alias calc 'dtcalc &'
alias cls 'clear'
alias dir 'ls'
alias n ' nedit &'

This all call the relevant programs from the sun environment and i can use the
default already known cals, dir, cls commands at teh command prompt.

So how are you going to use it in your program. Here are some simple things taht
you should know when creating this shortcuts.

• break down your tasks that you do repeatedly.
  
• make series of allias for them.
  
• keep it simple
  
• keep it short
  
• divide and conqure if the task is long, divide it into subtask and impliment them.

Best of MyAeSI 2009 – Training and skills

To mark the end of this year, for next few posts, I will list out the best of 2009 posts of MyAeSI . The posts will be arranged in the following categories.

• Study related
• Training and Skills
• Career and Job related

This one deals with Training and Skills. Please enjoy the posts

1. How I learnt ANSYS, NASTRAN or Solidworks?
2. Take up a Tool early on in your AeSI days
3. UG
4. Training is all about your Mentors work
5. 25 Very Useful Excel Keyboard Shortcuts
6. AeSI Training: 11 questions to ask yourself before...
7. Some Tips to learn from Tutorials
8. When is AeSI training not worth doing?
9. Software,Training and AeSI graduates
10. Matlab to start yourself to programming!!
11. Want a job write a presentable resume
12. Get proper experience in AeSI training
13. Stipendiary training programmes in NAL
14. Catia and solidwork
15. Transferable skills and core knowledge
16. Which Programming languages to learn?
17. Some thoughts on learning catia or other car software...
18. Three software's that I would recommend
19. Which software to use? Advise to AeSI aerospace st...
20. Which version of CAD or CAE software should you us...
21. Fastest way to learn a CAD software
22. 7 things to take note while learning an analysis program.
23. Riding bike and learning catia what's the connection?
24. Cinema, funcity and NAL training! - What's the connection? 
25. Two ways to get maximum out of any training
26. What my learning of excel can teach you in learning other CAE software?
27. What AeSI graduates should learn instead of CATIA?...
28. List of 50 common excel worksheet functions

Bonus

• Miss Pooja

If you think someone else will benefit from this, then go ahead forward this to them.

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